The hype is palpable: As tech folks from near and far converge for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Fransisco — one of the only places where Waymo is available to the public — there’s ample chatter about the autonomous vehicle service.
“If you think about AI hype and all, everyone gets excited about what 10 years down the line looks like, when you look at self-driving cars,” Pegah Ebrahimi, co-founder and managing partner of FPV Ventures, said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. “You don’t get perfect for a while, but people get really excited, and they live in this world of optimism of what it could be, and they kind of want it all to happen right now.”
The excitement around Waymo among Disrupt attendees from outside San Francisco is a clear example of how hype operates: We get more invested in what might happen, as opposed to what is actually happening now, which is that Waymo is slower (and sometimes more expensive) than Uber. But it’s fun, and it’s irresistible to share a video of the driverless vehicle on social media.
For Natalie Sportelli, director at Bullish, social media is a key part of how hype operates.
“I think internet excitement and media creates a lot of hype for consumer [products],” Sportelli said onstage. But social media doesn’t just work for futuristic experiences like Waymo. Even Mill, which founder Harry Tannenbaum calls “a raccoon’s worst nightmare,” has managed to harness over 80,000 followers on Instagram for its high-tech trash can.
“We ask people to come dive into the dumpster with us,” said Tannenbaum. “I think any time you can have folks help amplify your message and build content that is really exciting and interesting on its own, it’s way better than paying for a click.”
Mill’s bins dehydrate compostable materials and break them down into grounds, which can be used for gardening or as chicken feed. Trash tech might not be particularly glamorous, but its business can easily be reframed as valuable green tech that has the potential to cut down on food waste (once Mill can get to a price point that’s accessible to the average consumer — right now, the device costs $360 per year).
On the consumer end, Sportelli says that the best way to capitalize on hype is to build lasting relationships with customers.
“One thing I’ve definitely learned across all of my different careers is, people will love and continue to buy from you if they really love the product experience and like what they feel,” she said. That remains true whether it’s a trendy product like Glossier face wash, or, yes, a trash can. “This is also true with B2B SaaS, like, I love Guideline, my 401(K) provider, and that’s software, and I think the experience is amazing.”
Given the current hype cycle around AI, some companies are eager to tell investors that they’re powered by AI, while others are less overt. What you might not glean from Mill’s product at first glance is that it uses AI to know when there’s enough food in the bin to start dehydrating it.
As an investor, Ebrahimi is more interested in a company’s overall potential than its relationship to media buzz.
“If you actually are solving a problem, you don’t talk about any of the hype stuff — you’re like, this is the problem I’m solving,” she said. “You don’t want to hear about the hype. … You just want to know, what are you solving and can you solve it for me efficiently?”